The Cavalier
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George Washington Cable >> The Cavalier
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Silence was silver this time, speed was golden. But every step met its
obstacle; there were low boughs, festoons of long-moss, bushes, briers,
brake-cane, mossy logs, snaky pools, and things half fallen and held
dead. If at any point on the bridle-path, near the stream, some cowpath,
footpath, any trail whatever, led across to the road, my liers-in-wait
were certainly guarding it and would rush to the road by that way as
soon as they found I was flanking them. And so I strove on at the best
speed I could make, and burst into the road with a crackle and crash
that might have been heard a hundred yards away. One glance up the
embowered alley, one glance down it, and I whirled to the right, drove
in the spur, and flew for the bridge. A wild minute so--a turn in the
road--no one in sight! Two minutes--another turn--no one yet!
Three--three--another turn--no one in front, no one behind--
The thunder of our own hoofs
Was all the sound we heard.
A fourth turn and no one yet! A fifth--more abrupt than the others--and
there--here--yonder now behind--was the path I had feared, but no one
was in it, and the next instant the bridge flashed into view. With a
great clatter I burst upon it, reached the middle, glanced back, and
dropped complacently into a trot. Tame ending if--but as I looked
forward again, what did I see? A mounted man. At the other end of the
bridge, in the shade of overhanging trees, he moved into view, and well
I knew the neat fit of that butternut homespun. He flourished a revolver
above his head and in a drunken voice bade me halt.
I halted; not making a point of valor or discretion, but because he was
Charlotte Oliver's husband. I read his purpose and listened behind me as
we parleyed. "Don't halt me, sir, I'm a courier and in a hurry."
He hiccoughed. "Let's--s'--see y' orders."
I took my weapon into my bridle-hand by the barrel and began to draw
from my bosom the empty envelope addressed Coralie Rothvelt. At the same
time I let my horse move forward again, while I still listened backward
with my brain as busy as a mill. Was there here no hidden succor? Was
that no part of Ned Ferry's plan--if the plan was his? Were those
villains waiting yet, up at the ford? I could hear nothing at my back
but the singing of innumerable birds.
"Halt!" the drunkard growled again, and again I halted, wearing a look
of timid awe, but as full of guile as a weasel. I reined in abruptly so
as to make the reach between us the fullest length of my outstretched
arm with the paper in two fingers as I leaned over the saddle-bow. He
bent and reached unsteadily, and took the envelope; but hardly could his
eye light upon the superscription before it met the muzzle of my weapon.
"Don't move." My tone was affectionate. "Don't holla, or I'll give you
to the crows. Back. Back off this bridge--quick! or I'll--" I pushed
the pistol nearer; the danger was no less to him because I was
thoroughly frightened. He backed; but he glared a devilish elation, for
behind me beat the hoofs of both his horsemen. I had to change
my tactics.
"Halt! Turn as I turn, and keep your eye on _this."_
Glad was I then to be on a true cavalryman's horse that answered the
closing of my left leg and moved steadily around till I could see down
the bridge. Oliver, after a step or two, stopped. "Turn!" I yelled, and
swelled. "One, two,--"
He turned. There was not a second to spare. The two long-haired fellows
came nip and tuck. I see yet their long deer-hunters' rifles. But I
remembered my pledge to this man's wife, and proudly found I had the
nerve to hold the trigger still unpressed when at the apron of the
bridge the rascals caught their first full sight of us as we sat
humpshouldered, eye to eye, like one gray tomcat and one yellow one.
They dragged their horses back upon their haunches. One leaped to the
ground, the other aimed from the saddle; but the first shot that woke
the echoes was neither theirs nor mine, but Sergeant Jim Langley's,
though that, of course, I did not know. It came from a tree on our side
of the water, some forty yards downstream. The man in the saddle fired
wild, and as his horse wheeled and ran, the rider slowly toppled over
backward out of saddle and stirrups and went slamming to the ground.
His companion had no time to fire. Instantly after these two shots came
a third, and some willows upstream filled with its white smoke. The
second long rifle fell upon the bridge and its owner sank to his knees
heaving out long cries of agony that swelled in a tremor of echoes up
and down the stream. Another voice, stalwart, elated, cut through it
like a sword. "Don't shoot, Smith, we're coming; save that hound for
the halter!"
The groans of the wounded man closed in behind it, a flood of agony, and
my own outcry increased the din as I called "Come quick, come quick! the
wounded fellow's remounting!"
The wretch had lifted himself to his feet by a stirrup. Then, giving
out, he had sunk prone, and now, still torturing the air with his horrid
cries, was crawling for his rifle. Oliver saw I had a new inspiration.
All the drunkenness left his eyes and they became the eyes of a snake,
but too quickly for him to guess my purpose I turned my weapon from his
face and fired. His revolver flew from his bleeding hand, a stream of
curses started from his lips, and as I thrust my pistol into his face
again and snatched his bridle he screamed to the crawling woodman
"Shoot! shoot! Kill one or the other of us! Oh! shoot! shoot!"
The rifle cracked, but its ball sang over us; a shot answered it behind
me; the howling man's voice died in a gurgle, and Sergeant Jim ran by
me, leaped upon the horse that had stayed beside his fallen rider, and
was off hot-footed after the other. "Turn your prisoner over to Kendall,
Smith," he cried, "and put out like hell for Clifton!"
I gave no assent, and I believe Oliver guessed my purpose to save him,
though his eyes were as venomous as ever. I flirted the rein off his
horse's neck and said, savagely "Come! quick! trot! gallop!" The
sergeant's young companion of the morning before dashed out of the
bushes on his horse with Jim's horse in lead. "I've got him safe,
Kendall," I cried, and my captive and I sped by him at a gallop on our
way to Ned Ferry's command.
XXII
WE SPEED A PARTING GUEST
Rising to higher ground, we turned into the Natchez, and Port Gibson
road where a farm-house and country "store" constituted Clifton. Still
at a gallop we left these behind and entered a broad lane between fields
of tasselling corn, where we saw a gallant sight. In the early sunlight
and in the pink dust of their own feet, down the red clay road at an
easy trot in column by fours, the blue-gray of their dress flashing with
the glint of the carbines at their backs, came Ferry's scouts with Ned
Ferry at their head. There was his beautiful brown horse under him, too.
My captive and I dropped to a walk, the column did the same, and Ferry
trotted forward, beckoning us to halt. His face showed triumph and
commendation, but no joy. Oliver answered his scrutiny with a blaze
of defiance.
"Good-morning, Smith, who is your prisoner?"
"His name is Oliver."
Ferry looked behind to the halted column. "Lieutenant Quinn, send two
men to guard this one. Smith, where's Sergeant Langley; where's Kendall?
Kendall?"
While I told of the scrimmage, the guard relieved me of Oliver, and as I
finished, three men galloped up and reined in. "All right," said
one, saluting.
"South?" asked our leader.
"Before day," replied the new-comer, glowing with elation, and I grasped
the fact that the enemy had taken our bait and I had not betrayed my
country. The three men went to the column, and Ferry, looking up from
the despatch which I had delivered to him, said--
"Of course no one has seen this despatch, eh?--Oh!"--a smile--"yes?
who?"
"Two Federal officers."
"Two--what?" His smile broadened. "You _know_ that?"
"I saw them, Lieutenant, looking in at the door to see the despatch put
back under my pillow. Yes, sir, by the same hand that had shown it
to them."
"Whose hand was it; that fellow's, yonder?" Oliver was several paces
away.
"No, Lieutenant, I don't believe he had anything to do with it; and I've
no absolute proof, either, that he was at the bridge to rob or kill me.
I threatened his life first, sir. At any rate that hand under my pillow
was neither his nor his father's."
"But they were present, eh?"
"They were neither of them present, Lieutenant; that hand was Miss
Coralie Rothvelt's."
"Oh, no!" he murmured, "that cannot be!" "I saw her face, Lieutenant,
nearer to mine than yours is now. But she did it to help us--oh, but I
know that, sir! She came under my window and told me she had done it!
She told me to tell you she hadn't thwarted your plan, but only improved
on it, and I believe--Lieutenant, if you will hear me patiently through
a confession which--" I choked with emotion.
He lighted up with happy relief. "No, you need not make it. And you need
not turn so pale." Whereat I turned red. "She saw the despatch was a
trap for the Yankees, and used it so, you think? Ah, yes, Smith, I see
it all, now; she pumped you dry."
I could not speak, I shook my head, and for evidence in rebuttal I
showed in my eyes two fountains of standing tears.
"How, then, did she know?"
"Lieutenant, she guessed! She must have just put two and two together
and guessed! Or else, Lieutenant,--"
"She must have pumped others before she pumped you, eh?" There was
confession in his good humor. "But tell me; did she not see also this
other trap, for this man and his father, and try to save them out of
it?--oh, if you don't want--never mind." He laid a leg over the front of
his saddle and sat thinking. So I see him to-day: his chestnut locks,
his goodly limbs and shoulders, the graceful boots, cut-away jacket,
faded sash, straight sword, and that look of care on his features which
intensified the charm of their spiritual cleanness; behind him his band
of picked heroes, and for background the June sky. Whenever I smell
dewy corn-fields smitten with the sun that picture comes back to me.
"No," he said again, "you need not tell me." By a placid light in his
face I saw he understood. He drew his watch, put it back, thought on,
and smiled at my uniform. "It has not the blue of the others," he said,
"but indeed they are not all alike, and it will match the most of
them--after a rain or two--and some dust. You have been trading horses?"
I explained. While doing so I saw one of the guard reaching the
prisoner's bridle to the other. Hah! Oliver had slapped the bridle free.
In went his spurs! By a great buffet on the horse's neck he wheeled him,
and with the rein dangling under the bits went over the fence like a
deer. "Bang! bang! bang!"
It was idle; a magic seems to shield a captive's leap for life. Away
across the corn he went to the edge of a tangled wood, over the fence
there again, and into the brush. "Halt! bang!" and "Halt! bang!" it was,
at every bound, but now the pursuers came back empty-handed, some
contemptuously silent, some laughing. Ferry glanced again at the time,
and I was having within me a quarrel with him for his indifference at
the prisoner's escape, when with cold severity he asked--
"Why did you not fire?"
I flushed with indignation, and my eye retorted to his that I had only
followed his example. His answer was a smile. "You, also, have been
guessing, eh?" he said, and when I glowed with gratitude he added,
"Never mind, we must have a long talk. At present there is a verbal
message for me; what is it?"
"Verbal message? No, Lieutenant, she didn't--oh!--from the General! Yes!
the General says--'Rodney.'"
He turned and moved to the head of the column. I followed. There, "Left
into line wheel--march!" chanted our second in command.
"Backwards--march!" and then "Right dress!" and the line, that had been
a column, dressed along the western edge of the road with the morning
sun in their faces. Then Ferry called "Fours from the right, to march to
the left--march!" and he and Quinn passed up the middle of the road
along the front of the line, with yours truly close at their heels,
while behind us the command broke into column again by fours from the
right and set the pink dust afloat as they followed back northward over
their own tracks with Sergeant Jim beside the first four as squadron
right guide. I had got where I was by some mistake which I did not know
how to correct,--I was no drill-master's pride,--and there was much
suppressed amusement at my expense along the front as we rode down it.
At every few steps until the whole line was a column Ned Ferry dropped
some word of cheer, and each time there would come back an equally quiet
and hearty reply. Near the middle he said "Brisk work ahead of us
to-day, boys," and I heard the reiteration of his words run among the
ranks. I also heard one man bid another warm some milk for the baby.
Trotting by a grove where the company had passed the night, we presently
took the walk to break by twos, and as we resumed the trot and turned
westward into a by-road, Lieutenant Quinn dropped back to the column and
sent me forward to the side of Ned Ferry. I went with cold shivers.
[Illustration: With the rein dangling under the bits he went over the
fence like a deer.]
XXIII
FERRY TALKS OF CHARLOTTE
"You have no carbine," said my commander. "And you have but one
revolver; here is another."
I knew it at a glance. "It's Oliver's," I said.
"We'll call it yours now," he replied. "Kendall picked it up, but he has
no need of it."
I remarked irrelevantly that I had not noticed when Sergeant Jim and
Kendall rejoined us, but Ferry stuck to the subject of the captured
weapon. "Take it," he insisted; "if you are not fully armed you will
find yourself holding horses every time we dismount to fight. And now,
Smith, I shall not report to the General this matter of the Olivers; you
shall tell him the whole of it, yourself; you are my scout, but you are
his courier."
"Lieutenant, I--I wish I knew the whole of it."
"Tell him all you know."
"Even things _she_ doesn't want told?"
"Ah!"--he gave a Creole shrug--"that you must decide, on the honor of a
good soldier. She has taken you into her confidence?"
"Only into her service," I said, but he raised his brows. "That is
more; certainly you are honored. What is it you would rather not tell
the General and yet you must; do I know that already?"
"Yes, for one thing, I've got to tell him that old Lucius Oliver can't
be hung too high or too soon. For months he has been--"
Ferry showed pain. "I know; save that for the General. And what else?"
"Why, the other one--the son. Lieutenant, is she that monster's wife?"
Ferry stroked his horse's neck and said very softly, "She is his wife."
I had to wait long for him to say more, but at length, with the same
measured mildness, he spoke on. This amazing Charlotte, bereft of
father, brother and mother, ward of a light-headed married sister, and
in these distracted times lacking any friend with the courage, wisdom
and kind activity to probe the pretensions of her suitor, had been
literally snared into marriage by this human spider, this Oliver, a man
of just the measure to simulate with cunning and patient labor the
character, bearing and antecedents of a true and exceptional gentleman
for the sake of devouring a glorious woman.
"But, eh!" I exclaimed, "how could ever such as she mistake him for--"
"Ah, he is, I doubt not, but the burnt-out ruin of what he was half a
year ago. You perceive, he has not succeeded; he has not devoured her;
actually she has turned his fangs upon himself and has defeated his
designs toward her as if by magic. And yet the only magic has been her
vigilance, her courage, her sagacity. Smith,"--again he stroked the
mane of his charger--"if I tell you--"
I gave him no pledge but a look.
"Since the hour of her marriage she has never gone into her chamber
without locking the door; she has never come out of it unarmed."
I remarked that had I been in her place I should either have sunk into
the mire, so to speak, or thrown myself, literally, into the river.
"Yes," he responded, "but not she! Her life is still hers; she will
neither give it away nor throw it away. She wants it, and she wants
it whole."
"Did she say that to you?"
He looked at me in wide surprise. "Ah! could you think she would speak
with me on that subject? No, I have learned what I know from a man we
shall meet to-day; the brother of Major Harper; and he, he has it
from--" my companion smiled--"somebody you have known a pretty long
time, I think, eh?"
"I see; I see; you mean my mother!"
He let me ponder the fact a long time. "Lieutenant," I asked at length,
"did you know your plot against the two Olivers would cross her wishes?"
"Ah!" was his quick response, "it crossed mine, like-wise. But, you
know, this life we have to live, it is never for two people only."
"No," I replied, with my eagerness to moralize, "no two persons, and
above all no one man and one woman, can ever be sure of their duty, or
even of their happiness, till they consider at least one third
person,--"
"Hoh!" interrupted Ferry, in the manner of one to whom the fact was
somehow of the most immediate and lively practical interest, "and to
consider a thousand is better." Then, after a pause, "Yes," he said, "I
know she could not like that move, but you remember our talk of
yesterday, where we first met?"
Indeed I did. Between young men, to whom the principles of living were
still unproved weapons, there was, to my taste, just one sort of talk
better than table-talk, and that was saddle-talk; I remembered vividly.
"You mean when we were saying that on whatever road a man's journey
lies, if he will, first of all, stick to that road, and then every time
it divides take the--I see! you came to where the road divided!"
"Yes, and of course I had to take the upper fork. I am glad you said
that yesterday morning; it came as sometimes the artillery, eh?--just at
the right moment."
"I didn't say it, Lieutenant; you said it."
"No, I think you said it;--sounds like you."
"It was you who said it! and anyhow, it was you who had the strength to
do it!"
He laughed. "Oh!--a little strength, a little
vanity,--pride--self-love--we have to use them all--as a good politician
uses men."
I looked him squarely in the eyes and began to burn. At every new
unfolding of his confidence I had let my own vanity, pride, self-love be
more and more flattered, and here at length was getting ready to esteem
him less for showing such lack of reserve as to use _me_ as an
escape-valve for his pent-up thoughts, when all at once I fancied I saw
what he was trying to do. I believed he had guessed my temptations of
the night and was making use of himself to warn me how to fight them. "I
understand," said I, humbly.
But this only pleasantly mystified him. He glanced all over me with a
playful eye and said, "You must have a carbine the first time our
ordnance-wagon finds us. Drop back, now, into the ranks."
I did so; but I felt sure I should ride beside him again as soon as he
could make an opportunity; for it was plain that by a subtle unconfessed
accord he and _she_ had chosen me to be a true friend between them.
About noon, while taking a brief rest to give our horses a bite, we were
joined by an ambulance carrying Major Harper's brother and some freight
which certainly was not hospital stores. When we remounted, this vehicle
moved on with us, in the middle of the column, and I was called to ride
beside it and tell all about the arrival of Miss Harper and her nieces
at Hazlehurst, and their journey from Brookhaven to camp. Ned Ferry rode
on the side opposite me and I noticed that all the fellows nearest the
ambulance were choice men; Sergeant Jim was not there, but Kendall was
one, and a young chap on a large white-footed pacer was another. Having
finished my task I had gathered my horse to fall back to my place at the
rear, when my distinguished auditor said, "I'm acquainted with your
mother, you know."
He was not so handsome as his brother, though younger. His affability
came by gleams. I asked how that good fortune had come to my mother, and
he replied that there was hardly time now for another story; we might
be interrupted--by the Yankees. "Ask the young lady you met yesterday
evening," he added, with a knowing gleam, and smiled me away; and when
by and by the enemy did interrupt, I had forgiven him. Whoever failed to
answer my questions, in those days, incurred my forgiveness.
XXIV
A MILLION AND A HALF
About mid-afternoon I awoke from deep sleep on a bed of sand in the
roasting shade of a cottonwood jungle. A corporal was shaking me and
whispering "Make no noise; mount and fall in."
Round about in the stifling thicket a score of men were doing so.
Lieutenant Quinn stood by, and at his side Sergeant Jim seemed to have
just come among us. The place was pathless; only in two directions could
one see farther than a few yards. Through one narrow opening came an
intolerable glare of sunlight from a broad sheet of gliding water, while
by another break in the motionless foliage could be seen in milder
light, filling nearly the whole northern view, the tawny flood of the
Mississippi. A stretch of the farther shore was open fields lying very
low and hidden by a levee.
As we noiselessly fell into line, counting off in a whisper and rubbing
from ourselves and our tortured horses the flies we were forbidden to
slap, I noticed rising from close under that farther levee and some two
miles upstream, a small cloud of dust coming rapidly down the hidden
levee road. It seemed to be raised entirely by one or two vehicles.
Behind us our own main shore was wholly concealed by this mass of
cottonwoods on the sands between it and the stream, on a spit of which
we stood ambushed. On the water, a hundred and fifty yards or so from
the jungle, pointed obliquely across the vast current, was a large skiff
with six men in it. Four were rowing with all their power, a fifth sat
in the bow and the other in the stern. Quinn, in the saddle, watched
through his glass the cottonwoods from which the skiff had emerged at
the bottom of a sheltered bay. Now he shifted his gaze to the little
whirl of dust across the river, and now he turned to smile at Jim, but
his eye lighted on me instead. I risked a knowing look and motioned with
my lips, "Just in time!"
"No," he murmured, "they're late; we've been waiting for them."
The sergeant's low order broke the platoon into column by file, Quinn
rode toward its head with his blade drawn, and as he passed me he handed
me his glass. "Here, you with no carbine, stay and watch that boat till
I send for you. If there's firing, look sharp to see if any one there is
hit, and who, and how hard. Watch the boat, nothing else."
He moved straight landward through the cottonwoods, followed by the men
in single file, but halted them while the rear was still discernible in
the green tangle. Presently they unslung carbines, and I distinctly
heard galloping. It was not far beyond the cottonwoods. The Yankees were
after us. Suddenly it ceased. Over yonder, shoreward in the thicket,
came a sharp command and then a second, and then, right on the front of
the jungle, at the water's edge, the shots began to puff and crack, and
the yellow river out here around the boat to spit!--spit!--in wicked
white splashes. Every second their number grew. Behind me Quinn and his
men stole away. But orders are orders and I had no choice but to watch
the boat. The man in the stern had his back to me, and no face among the
other five did I know. They were fast getting away, but the splashes
came thick and close and presently one ball found its mark. The man at
the stern hurriedly changed places with an oarsman; and as the relieved
rower took his new seat he turned slowly upon his face as if in mortal
pain, and I saw that the fresh hand at the oar was the brother of Major
Harper. Just as I made the discovery "Boom!" said my small dust-cloud
across the river, and "hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry--" like
a train on a trestle-work--"boom!"--a shell left its gray track in the
still air over the skiff and burst in the tops of the cottonwoods. The
green thicket grew pale with the bomb's white smoke, yet "crack! crack!"
and "spit! spit!" persisted the blue-coats' rifles. "Boom!" said again
the field-piece on yonder side the water. Its shell came rattling
through the air to burst on this side, out of the flashing and cracking
of rifles and the sulphurous bomb smoke arose cries of men getting
mangled, and I whimpered and gnawed my lips for joy, and I watched the
boat, but no second shot came aboard, and--"Boom!--hurry-hurry-hurry-
hurry"--ah! the frightful skill of it! A third shell tore the
cottonwoods, its smoke slowly broadened out, a Federal bugle beyond
the thicket sounded the Rally, and the cracking of carbines ceased.
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